FOOD STAMP PRESIDENT: RECORD HIGH, 46,681,833 Million

Food stamps enrollment has hit a new record high. 46,681,833 million
are now enrolled in the social welfare program, according to the United
States Department of Agriculture, the federal department that runs the
program.

Here's a chart from the minority side of the Senate Budget Committee, outlining the program's enormous growth:As the chart shows, when President Obama took office, enrollment in
the food stamps program was 31.98 million. Now, not even four years
later, it's a whopping 46.48 million. (In 2002, as the chart states,
"19.1 million Americans received food stamps.")

In fact, the newly released data represents enrollment in July (the
last month for which data is available). Assuming the program remained
on its projected path, the number of those enrolled in food stamps is
likely now larger by several hundreds of thousands."USDA has engaged in an aggressive outreach and promotional campaign
to boost food stamp enrollment. Among these efforts are an ongoing
partnership with the Mexican government to advertise food stamps to
Mexican nationals, migrant workers, and non-citizen immigrants. Partly
as a result of these efforts, the number of non-citizens on food stamps
has quadrupled since 2001," explains the Republican side of the Senate
Budget Committee.And the cost, the committee explains, is astronomical. "Total
spending on food stamps is projected to reach nearly $800 billion over
the next 10 years, with no fewer than 1 in 9 people on the program at
any given time. Neither food stamp participation nor spending on the
program are ever projected to return to pre-recession levels at any
point in the next 10 years."